Easter Sunday

by: Simona Carini

The little girl with big green eyes looks up at the middle-aged woman. The woman gives to the girl a small cake, a baked bowler hat without brim, its rounded top covered with egg white icing dotted with colored sprinkles. The little girl's face melts into a smile, her big eyes a deep pool of crystalline joy. She places her small hands around the side of the cake and carries it like a sacred trophy to the dining room table, where a plate is ready to receive it.

"Dad, will you please cut me a slice? Aunt Lucia made this for me." The father accedes to the request, smiling. The little girl walks to her seat holding a plate with a golden slice reclining on it. The middle-aged woman looks at the scene and she, too, smiles at the little girl's joy.

In the center of the table there is a bigger version of the little girl's cake, emanating a faint smell of sweetness and orange peel. This cake has no icing, and its rounded top, dark brown and smooth, has the surface tension of a bubble about to burst. Next to the cake, six hard-boiled eggs, shelled, glisten in a bowl, and a plate is covered with thin slices of "lonza," gossamer threads of fat drawing delicate decorations on the deep purple pork meat. But the little girl's greedy green eyes are fixed on another plate, holding half of an immaculately white truncated cone.

"Mom, will you please give me some ricotta?"

The mother cuts a slice of the soft cheese and deposits it on the little girl's slice of cake, without smiling. The result is a geometrically precise pairing of the two foods. Using both hands, the little girl raises the combination to her lips, then closes her eyes and mouth around the first morsel. The ricotta, cool, creamy and dense, immediately takes center stage, while the cake, crumbly, slightly dry and vaguely sweet, acts as supporting cast. A whole year of expectation finds complete satisfaction in small bite after small bite of gustative bliss, while the rest of the scene is swallowed into oblivion.

Afterwards, sitting next to her aunt in one of the wooden pews of the cold church of St. Nicholas, bathed in the fragrance of a myriad flowers, the little girl is so content that the village priest preaching seemingly endlessly about human frailty and downright wickedness has no power to ruffle the inner peace manifested in her serene green eyes.

This episode recurred almost exactly in every detail several times during my childhood. On Holy Thursday my family would travel from Perugia to Poggio Catino, my father's native village, to celebrate Easter with my Aunt Lucia, who lived in the house where she, her three cousins and her half-brother (my father) had grown up. On Easter Sunday, before going to Holy Mass, we would have breakfast together: it was the only day of the year when the whole family sat down at the table for the earliest meal of the day. The tension between my parents and the animosity between my mother and my aunt were there the whole time, as tangible as the sweet-smelling cakes and the richly embroidered tablecloth. For a brief half hour, however, I was able to push aside the perennial dark cloud and enjoy my favorite meal of the year under an almost clear sky.

The foods on the table were Easter traditions. The small cake I received was called "palombella" (little dove) and its bigger version "pizza di Pasqua" (Easter bread). My Aunt Lucia, like her mother, her stepmother and the women from previous generations, would make the palombella and several "pizze" using the family recipe and would bake them in the public wood-burning oven the village used to have. My father would tell me how, on Easter's eve, the village women flocked to the oven with their pizze. The tension was palpable when the baker started to take out of the oven the sweet-smelling pizze and the result of each woman's efforts were perforce submitted to public evaluation. A cake that had not risen well above the rim of the pan and whose top was not rounded like a diminutive dome and smooth like a tight drumhead was perceived as an indelible blot on the maker's name. My father always ended his story by telling me that my grandmother's pizze di Pasqua were perfect, which filled me with grand-daughterly pride.

The pizze were baked in special copper pans that usually hung on the kitchen wall facing the fireplace and were not used for any other purpose, because they represented the only relics of a once copious heritage. My aunt would describe to me the dizzying array of pots and pans of all shapes and sizes that furnished the kitchen when she was a child, the combined dowries of the two women who had married my grandfather and his brother. The two families lived in the same spacious house, at first for convenience and later because they merged, when my widowed grandfather married his brother's widow. Most of the household's metal treasures were melted during World War II, when Italian women were asked by Il Duce to sacrifice their metal possessions to help the war effort. Copper pots and pans, wrought-iron beds and wedding rings were eagerly offered, hastily melted and promptly wasted. A few kitchen pieces were spared, like a "conca," the hourglass-shaped container my grandmother filled with drinking water at the public fountain and then hoisted on her head to carry back home, the ladle used to take water out of the conca, a teapot that my mother used, filled with hot water, to shower my brother and me before we had the water heater installed in the house, and the set of pans used to bake the pizze di Pasqua.

The closure of the public oven put an end to my aunt's baking and erased the palombella from the Easter picture of my teen age years. We still had pizza di Pasqua for breakfast, but it was produced by the Brothers Giusti bakery in Casperia, the village where my mother grew up, only five miles away, but inhabited, according to my father, by people of a completely different race, whose most notable trait was that they never smiled. Although it was good, the pizza di Pasqua from the bakery did not taste like my aunt's palombella. Lighter in texture and paler in color, it was a washed-out version of what my eyes and taste buds had learned to expect. It did not smile.

After I moved out of my parents' house in my early 20's, I stopped celebrating Easter with my family and my aunt. Back then, it felt good not to have my time measured by traditional celebrations, and renouncing the special breakfast seemed like a fair price to pay for the newly acquired freedom. Nostalgia for what was one of my favorite foods, however, has been nibbling at me ever since.

As I try to mold into words what my senses remember, twenty more years have passed and other changes have occurred. I never asked my aunt for her recipe for the pizza di Pasqua, probably because I thought I could always do it later. Now it is too late. The pans for the pizza di Pasqua, unused after the village oven closed down, have been collecting dust in the silence of the kitchen since my aunt passed away almost four years ago. Ricotta made with sheep milk by the sheepherders living a few miles from the village belongs to a world I left behind. I still have, however, my sensory memories, into which family stories are woven seamlessly. I honor these memories by telling them, and in the telling I am as joyful as the little girl with the big green eyes relishing her favorite food of the year. I know that my aunt is looking at the scene, smiling.

It's Nice to Chat

by: Erin Lott

It isn’t late when Michael, Diane, Josh and I turn left up the drive of Tenuta Villa Floritta, lined with geraniums and row upon row of Prosecco, pinot bianco, and verdiso grapes. It is hot; we have been in Italy for a week now, and we are getting ready to leave San Michelle di Floretto and head to Roma. But before we leave the north of Italy for the capital city, we want bubbly wine and many bottles of it.

The proprietor, whose name we will never know, is limping, and as Michael opens the car door, he asks us, in English because we are so obviously American, if we want a tour. “I can only give you a quick tour because I am in a hurry,” and he grabs his crutches and hobbles to the wine warehouse. We hurry behind him.

Michael doesn’t want to impose and says, “Well, we’ll take six bottles and let you be on your way.” We don’t mind how the wine tastes. It has been so hot. And we are becoming Italian about our Prosecco—an easy sinking into the hedonism of a wine light and fruity enough to be poured at 8 a.m., drunk throughout the day and then served with dinner. Not that we are drinking it that much, but we understand that there are people who do.

The proprietor says, “No, no, it’s nice to chat. I haven’t been able to see many people.” He nods to his leg. “The tibia and the femur don’t line up. I now have two holes in my knee. They had to put in new cartilage.” We nod as if we have a full medical understanding of what he is saying. “Well, I’m 50, and I played a lot of sport, so it had to go.” We want to talk about wine. We nod some more. We do a lot of nodding.

Michael asks, “What is the percentage of Prosecco grapes to pinot bianco?” We know Prosecco is a wine that’s not up to such scrutiny, and the phone rings: for a moment we’re free to wander among the wine in the warehouse.

Josh lifts the flap of an open box and peers in to discover filled bottles of wine. He motions me over, and we look around, noticing stacks that run six deep and six wide of these boxes. They are piled from the floor almost to the ceiling, with wooden crates separating every six boxes high. It feels decadent and abundant, sentiments we have always liked since we started dating three years ago.

Michael and Diane wander in front of the warehouse, looking at the symmetrical rows of grapes, their pattern repeating and almost waving in the heat. Michael is Josh’s step-father and Diane is his wife, who is not Josh’s mother through a complicated development of ex-hippies living on a commune in Kansas and not marrying—a process as foreign to my Catholic Midwestern upbringing as the wines of Italy or as the countryside we find ourselves in. We amble through a high-tech labyrinth of steel drums, the stacks of boxes, and tubes and wires, both amazed by the complicated doings of any winery and delighted that we will be taking some of this fruity, bubbly wine with us to Roma. We feel like travelers who know where to get the local produce. We’re almost giddy with satisfaction.

“My GPS system,” our proprietor tells us, snapping his cell phone shut and corralling Michael and Diane back into the warehouse. “They say someone stole my Jaguar, which as you can see is not true,” and he points to his black Jaguar behind which our rental car sits. He sees us eying the car, calculating the cost of the six bottles of Prosecco we have agreed to buy, and he says, “Don’t worry. We Italians have our blight. We have our problems. Don’t think I’m racist, but it’s those blacks from Africa, those Indians, those Moroccans—it’s like your country in the 1940s.” We don’t understand what he is saying, and he must be able to read that on one of our faces—it doesn’t matter which one of us, for I am sure we are all sharing the same gracious, silent, wary expression. “Ten years ago they weren’t here. Ten years ago we didn’t have problems. In the North we like the good life: good food, good wine, good cars, good clothing.” We step back. We just want to taste wine. “Come, come,” he motions with one of his crutches, “into the tasting room. You’ll see. Let me show you, let me show you.”

Michael—who likes adventures, to be in charge, who is in Europe for the first time in his 50 some years—goes first. Josh and I are somewhere in the middle, and Diane—who often lags behind a little because she is looking at For Rent signs in front of poets’ flats or at ferns that grow on medieval city walls or at doorknockers in the shapes of rabbits so she can photograph them—notices a cage atop a scooter. “Are those mice?” Josh and I both freeze. Had she said nothing, just walked past the mice, we could be inside the tasting room with the Prosecco.

“For the two snakes in the house.” Our director stops, takes one look at the cage, one look at Diane. “One snake, the bull snake, is American—the last time my sons and I visited New York, I asked my son, ‘Do you want a Play Station? Do you want a computer? What do you want?’ and I would smuggle it back into Italy. But my son said that he wanted the bull snake. And so I said ‘put the snake in your pants and shut up.’ Ten hours later the snake was Italian.” He nimbly maneuvers the crutches and we have to trot to keep up. Diane does not photograph the mice.

Inside the tasting room, Josh and I settle behind the bar, ready to drink. Prosecco itself is not a serious bottle of wine—it is not as intricate as Champagne, and Prosecco doesn’t really care. Champagne is comfortable at weddings and in heady toasts. Champagne bubbles from fountains. But Prosecco loves to watch motocross races, throw darts in pool halls, and stay out too late. Prosecco is lighthearted right from the start. All we need is Prosecco.

The tasting room itself is an almost all-wooden room—hardwood floors, wood paneling, and a beautiful oak bar—all in contrast to the lustrous modern warehouse. There are dents and ridges and bowls in the wood of the bar and the floor is worn. Far from making the room look ragged, the damage makes the room compelling like the backroom of a favorite restaurant.

“This is lovely,” Diane says. Our proprietor hobbles behind the bar:
“My son and I, we distressed the wood ourselves. We took our guns out to the back and we shot up the wood.” He reaches below to get a chilled bottle.
“Do you like to hunt?” Diane asks.
“No. I just like to shoot,” he says, placing the unopened bottle on the bar. “Every night I keep my Colt beneath my pillow. Just like Americans.”
We pause.
I shift; I think of the deliberate emptiness beneath my own pillow. For a moment I think to correct him about the propensity for Americans to tuck their guns in at night, but I know the rules of being a good guest. As an adult I want to challenge his misconception, but as a child, I learned that we listen to the hosts, that we keep our own prejudices concealed even if they share theirs.
“Is there a lot of crime in this area?” Michael asks.
“Oh yes.” Our proprietor makes no move to uncork a bottle. He leans on his crutches toward us. He is willing to reveal his secrets. “Those people from Albania or from Romania will come into your house at night and use sleeping gas or hold you at gunpoint until you give them money.”
Josh and I look at each other. We are listening to him and getting up from our perches behind the bar. We are weak.

We funnel him into the office in an attempt to pay for our wine—six bottles comes to only 16.70 euros, a price even today we still cannot believe—where he proceeds to discuss ways to get around taxes in Italy. He laughs and says, “Oh, I have said too much already. Everyone in Northern Italy, however, is honest compared to those in the south. In fact, if we go to Naples we would see, and pardon the phrase here,” he begs of us, “those wops that go to America, those short, black Italians. In fact, my wife, well, she is tall and blonde. The glory of the north is that there are all kinds of people up here, but in the south all you get are those short, black delinquents.” Michael, Diane, Josh, and I stand silently.

Somehow we pay. I think it is Michael who pulls the colorful euros from his wallet. We’re turning to go, and our proprietor gets to talking about George Bush and the courage of the Americans and the English. He wants to ensure we know that the Italians are not against the Iraq war—a stance that officially the country seems to share, but the unofficial position has been quite different at least according to the abundance of Pace banners and flags. We want to back away. Instead, we just nod.

Outside, he wants to know our heritage. We laugh and eye each other, trying to determine who will speak first. Michael says his family is originally from Mexico.

Our director then turns to Diane and says, “You’re German,” and then to Josh “English but also German” and then to me “Irish.”
I say, “Dutch and German mostly.”
He says, “No, Irish.”
No one says a word.
He then says, “You see, we are the parents of your country.”

Still we say nothing. We are calculating the cost of our wine. Has it been too much to pay for each of us, especially Michael who has nothing of Europe to inherit save exactly this moment? So much time has passed. We have purchased this wine.

Supra

by: Katherine Church Holland

“Just remember to pace yourselves,“ our daughter Cameron whispered as we bumped along a pothole-riddled road on the outskirts of Gurjaani, dogs flying left and right. “It’s Leila’s birthday and our last night here, so the supra will probably last forever.” My husband, Pete, and I nudged each other, confident that we would be out of there in an hour or two. After all, how long could a dinner, even a traditional Georgian feast, last? Five and a half hours later, we were wondering the same thing.

We had come to the Republic of Georgia to visit Cameron, a Peace Corps volunteer. Her town was set in a broad valley amidst vineyards, heavy with fruit, their leaves slowly turning from green to russet. Along the eastern edge of the valley lay an almost alarming wall of sharp-edged, snow-bedecked mountains, the Caucasus. Like all of Georgia, Gurjaani had suffered blow upon blow after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Wineries lay abandoned, men loitered in smoke-encircled packs along the road, and threadbare laundry dangled from the balconies of what had once been luxurious hotels. Unemployment was rampant, but the Georgians remained determined. In each backyard, no matter how small, chickens and pigs were fattened on kitchen scraps, fruit trees abounded, and vegetables flourished. Families carefully tended small patches of grape vines. Autumn was spent harvesting, slaughtering, canning, drying, preserving, crushing and distilling. A family of four usually slept together in one bedroom - and in the room next door? Endless rows of jars and bottles, the ceiling festooned with curing meats and drying sweets. For Georgians, eating and drinking was the essence of life.

We pulled up to a modest stucco building with guests everywhere. In a shaded area nestled against a brick wall, we discovered an enormous vat filled with fermenting grapes, stems, and leaves that emitted pungent aromas and strange rumblings. As we inhaled, we could imagine the wine to come. An elderly woman, compact and clad in black, nudged us, nodding toward a clay bread oven that stood nearby. Inside she had roasted a suckling pig, now deep-wheat in tone and shining with porcine goodness. She delicately carved a piece of meat and skin and handed it to me. As I took a bite, a dribble of fat ran down my chin and I pondered the counterpoint of the crackling skin and the unctuous flesh. What would the meal ahead bring?

And what it did bring! We entered the dining room and counted nineteen different dishes displayed on a table set with every bit of china and glassware owned not only by Leila but her neighbors and friends as well. Spread before us were spinach nests bejeweled with pomegranate seeds; blintz-like crepes stuffed with pork; eggplant napped with walnut sauce; beets drizzled with yogurt; rolls of cheese encasing mint; khatchapuri, the crisp Georgian slipper bread stuffed with cheese or beans; meatballs spiced with garlic, fenugreek, and sumac, and on and on. Leila and her female friends emerged again and again from the kitchen, bearing hot dishes topped with fragrant clouds of steam: that suckling pig, warm and succulent; khinkali, pork dumplings related to Russian pelmeni and, amazingly enough, Shanghai dumplings; mtsvati (pork, freshly killed, cooked on a makeshift grill in the driveway); lamb braised with onions, spices and just-picked herbs. Palate-cleansing branches of parsley and tarragon and thick slices of tomatoes and cucumber engulfed salad-size plates. The women bustled in and out of the kitchen; the men started and just kept on drinking.

Gia, the tamada or master of ceremonies, started the toasting, raising a wine-filled ram’s horn and drinking it down. It was his responsibility to make sure the toasts kept coming, everyone was happy and nobody passed out. This last point was a distinct possibility because the consumption of five liters of spirits by a single person (always male) at a supra was well known. We toasted God; our host and hostess; each of the twenty or so people around the table; friends, new (us) and old; the food, but most of all, the Republic of Georgia. Lamentations were made over their present plight and hopes were raised that soon the country would be restored to its previous prosperity.

During a short pause in the revelry, while guests digested a little and loosened their belts, Leila moved to the upright piano and her eyes brightened as she played traditional Georgian folksongs. The party joined in, swaying with eyes closed, remembering how life had been.

With regret, we finally rose and murmured that we had to leave. Leila cried, “But we

haven’t had the cake and presentations yet!” Cake we understood, but presentations?

The cake, a fluffy pink confection crowned with candles, arrived amid great cheering. A lusty Georgian birthday song was followed by our family belting out “Happy Birthday to You.” Tears, more wine. Then out came the gifts – for us. Wine; cha cha, that aromatic eau de vie the Georgians drink for breakfast; jars of preserved cornelian cherries and tiny pears; packets of dried marigold and suneli-fenuli, a revered Georgian spice mix. Leila and her husband, Murabi, proudly presented the grand finale, a three-foot long glass sword filled with what they described as the finest of Georgian brandy. Hugs, kisses, cries of “come to the United States!” and “return soon to Georgia” echoed throughout the room. We left carrying the heart of the country in our souls.

Pictures:
1) Gia, the tamada, toasting with the traditional ram’s horn.
2) Susanna and her roast suckling pig.
3) The supra table before the hot dishes arrived and the toasts began.

House Dinner

by: Annie Wilson

“A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow!”

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur, stanza 12
Edward Fitzgerald 1859

The Summertime produce section of any Whole Foods market makes me misty-eyed with longing. I go to my neighborhood Whole Foods on either Saturday or Sunday to shop for my weekly groceries. Getting inspired to make something from what is freshest and what sounds delicious to me, I shop accordingly. I shop alone, and then more often than not, cook alone. I have never thought that this was a forlorn routine, but lately I have wondered at the tensions on my heartstrings as I browse the aisles. The sharp, cool scent of mint, pungency of basil, and the tart, dirty perfection of tomatoes – each of these arrest my thoughts of other kitchens, other times, and other friends. My circle today includes women who are mirror images of myself, working all day, attempting to exercise, eat some semblance of a meal, and relax before bed, before doing it all again in the morning. Friends are for the weekends when we eat out together. My own kitchen is so small and without any proper seating area that having the girls for dinner is nonsensical. Cocktail parties with little nibbles are fine, but to sit and eat off of plates? The idea makes me nervous and embarrassed. And why? Cooking obviously results in eating, and eating is most pleasurable among friends. Jamie Oliver has often preached that cooking doesn’t need to be costly or elegant, it’s just merely about getting friends together for some company. The kitchen is the center of a home, the hub of activity, aroma, discussion, arguments, and enjoyments. If you live alone and cook alone, can your home rightfully possess any of these things? Having a grown-up kitchen carries a lonely responsibility that shrinks from the fun of suppers organically generated by entropy and others.

I once had a home built on entropy – nature’s way of disorganizing itself. Perhaps entropy is what makes people gather in a kitchen despite every hostess’s best efforts to lure guests out to the terrace with a sunset view, or the newly re-upholstered living room; people want to be disorganized and close to the food source. People stand, chat, get in the way, laugh, and enjoy each other. Kitchens are now designed to accommodate this party culture, being built with an open plan, revealing all of the culinary goings-on to the rest of the house. While designed to welcome this international cultural zeitgeist, the French snobbishly call the open-kitchen design une cuisine americaine. Yet it is the houses with the smallest, most cramped, bottlenecked, kitchen plans that seem to generate the best party atmosphere. My own dorm in Paris had one centralized kitchen with only a sink and a hotplate – people sat on the counters while cooking, and “dinner parties” spread to sitting on the floor of the hallways. Languages and cultures squatting together, happily mixing over the international student food of spaghetti with sauce. Late nights, drinking too much, smoking even more, singing songs, arguing, telling stories, and generally carrying-on until day break. Upon returning to California after months at the Cite Universitaire, I cried for days. I woke each morning aching for the aroma of diesel and cigarettes, and the flavors of early baguettes, dirty, rich espressos, and cheap Greek sandwiches before class. I could hardly manage my grief at homecoming. Gone were our nights of cheap wine and chocolate by the river, of afternoon snacks of soft cheeses and home-cured olives, of navigating night club bouncers with insouciance, of going to classes the next day with glitter still smeared over the cheekbones. I was home, and in the middle of nowhere.

Once upon a time, an early 20^th-century farmhouse stood at the far western edge of Yolo County. Wanting to use the house on the burgeoning University Farm, the University of California moved the house to the campus at Davis. At some point during the 1970s, the house became the Davis Student Cooperative. Most old houses are renovated or kept up to date throughout their years, yet this house was largely untouched by reparation and impervious to most modern technologies. Electrical wiring was on the exterior of the walls and there was only a single phone line at the far, glassed-in room on the back porch. (Starting in the phone room, the phone wire slipped throughout the house in a maze of splitters and connectors, becoming enough of a phone line for all roommates to connect to the internet.) Ten roommates – mostly music majors, 110-degree heat, organic vegetables, a moody tail-less cat, a loud stereo, a steady production of quesadillas fueled by omnipresent marijuana, pumping out of one very tiny kitchen. Actually, the kitchen would not have been so small had it not been for the overwhelming juggernaut of a heating unit that some early-generation UC Physical Plant engineer decided to put in there. Massive, stainless steel, and rumbling steadily during the winter when turned on, our heating unit was truly the twelfth roommate. It was also a bulletin board and time capsule, detailing the complete history of our house. “Love your Mother” “Think Globally, Act Locally” “Imagine: Peace” “Clinton/Gore ‘92” – these were just a few of the many stickers that had been pasted to the heater. And then there were the recipes. Being situated as it was at the dead center of the kitchen, the heater naturally became a collection of the many recipes people made in the house at one time or another. Some of them were basic, such as the proper proportions for cooking rice, although my favorite was our roommate Neeru’s posting for homemade Chai tea: “Boil black tea in milk – let it rise & then cool three times. Then add sugar – a lot, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and allspice.” No proportions necessary. We did have cookbooks; the house favorite was The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, as well as any of the other cookbooks of the Molly Katzen/Moosewood variety, as well as The Vegetarian Epicure, and a beat-up copy of The Betty Crocker Cookbook. For fancy occasions, Deborah Madison’s Greens Cookbook was consulted. The first copy of Joy of Cooking I had received from my parents one Christmas I mistakenly left behind when I moved out, but my mom gave me Joy of Cooking on another Christmas, forgetting the first gift, so I came out even. It makes me truly happy to know that I personally endowed this bible to the house, although I wish I had switched it with the second copy, as I had hand-written the perfect pie crust recipe on the inside flap. Despite the presence of such cooking advice, most meals eaten at the DSC were impromptu inventions, never put to pen and paper. Dinner had to be vegetarian, even vegan. Stirfrys, pasta, soups, curries, chilis, even veggie fajitas were favorites. Our roommate Dave consistently challenged himself to make a weekly “one pot wonder” – usually resulting in a heavy, over-spiced concoction, served with beans or rice or both. 99% of all meals began with a sauté of garlic and onions.

Rules of the cooperative: No TV, no meat. Do your chores, respect your roommates, eat well, and cook dinner one night a week. Yes, house dinners provided Sunday through Thursday, guests are welcome. One cooked dinner with a partner – another roommate who would help with chopping, stirring, dishes, and overall organization. This is good to have when you’re twenty, and the chore of cooking for ten-plus hungry college students is daunting. Music was essential: Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Led Zeppelin, The Beastie Boys, and the soundtrack to Rent were on constant rotation. Prep space included the sink board, and a tiny home-constructed wooden “counter” made to fit the contours of the gigantic heater. If another roommate came to the kitchen, the cooks had to shuffle down and move out of the way to let them through. Sometimes, we had to do prep on the dining room table: an extremely large wooden spool with a hole in the center. Well, half of a wooden spool that at one time or another probably held industrial cable or wire – the kind that is used to build bridges. (The other half of the spool was next door, serving as a table to another CoOp household.)The table comfortably sat fifteen people, and was aged to a smooth antique wooden softness, with bumps and knots on the surface that kept things interesting when playing Jenga.

The true glory of the CoOp dinner came about in summer, when our house garden was overflowing with home-grown vegetables. One summer we had over thirty tomato plants, so one could enjoy the cleanly pungent scent of the dirty vines when gathering a warm apron-full in the golden evenings, while thinking: “What pasta sauce tonight?” The skin on my fingers would itch and burn from the pulp and acid from chopping a mountain of perfect sun-warm tomatoes. Then there were the peppers, corn, peas, and herbs: basil grew to three feet high, rosemary and oregano exploded their beds, and the mint spread from below the kitchen window along the back of the house. Mint we gathered and put into the dinner’s pitcher of water – cooling everything with some green from the garden. Dried herbs were kept in jars with beautifully colorful, hand-painted labels that offered little witticisms such as “Have you got the THYME?” Setting the table included gathering Mason jars or mugs, stacking plates at table in a mis-matched array- most crockery oddly familiar as it had been stolen from the dormitory dining commons, and bundling forks and spoons into a vase for the picking - knives were catch as catch can. Prior to dinner service we held hands in silence, breaking the circle only when the squeeze had been passed around to everyone.

Living as I do now with matching dishes, proper glasses, and a clean kitchen makes cooking too lonely, and frequently sad. Perfect kitchens make one hesitate to use them, kitchens that go unused generate a coldness throughout a home that makes visiting uncomfortable, never mind inhabiting. Then there is the grief at the sight of a beautiful Whole Foods produce section - paying for organic tomatoes is a bitter pill to swallow. Our small, strange, hodge-podge of a kitchen was the first pit-stop on the house thru-way between front door and back door, dining room and hallway. Not always clean, not always delicious, but always well-used, bottlenecked, uncomfortable, and fun. Standing at the stove, the back door would creak then bang and you knew someone was home to talk to, laugh with, and tell stories to, while you were preparing your weekly gift of food for ten others. I have never known myself to be so generous, to have such a heartbeat, such a carefree happiness, in a perfectly imperfect kitchen and home.

The Junk in My Trunk: A Cross-Country Chronicle

by: Kelly Carcione

Day #28

It is mid-April and we are pre-vacation in Vacationland. That much was clear during our 60-hour stay in Maine, most of which was spent seeking out open lobster shacks. There hasn’t been much excitement driving through Maine’s backcountry either, at least not until the dog spotted a roadside moose and exploded like a firecracker, bouncing around the backseat. For the past three hours, John has kept himself busy looking out for Steven King lurking in the dusky woods but I’ve got my eye on half a banana resting in the cup-holder. We’re out of food and low on gas. The next town, The Forks, is still 23 miles away.

Well, we were nearly through The Forks (pop. 35) before we realized we were in it at all. No gas station, no motel, no rustic diner. Night has fallen. Fear and starvation set in.

When we finally roll into Jackman, the population swells to 720, although I can count the hustle and bustle on one hand when we enter the general store. A burly, bearded giant grunts at the deli case and an equally burly woman fidgets with her keychain near the bathroom door. A couple of hunters spring from the sporting goods section armed with cases of Budweiser and bullets. I hurry past the pre-made hoagies and place our order: a large pepperoni pizza and a side order of jalapeno poppers. John goes out to fill the tank and I fill my pockets with napkins. We’ll be taking this order to go.

Safe in the minivan, I am excited for pizza, but John insists that we have appetizers first. Fine. We search our bags for the poppers. No poppers. Didn’t you order jalapeno poppers? I thought I saw him write it down. He must have left them out of the bag. I know I ordered them. Where the hell is the receipt…

When we open the pizza box, the mystery is solved. Glistening in their grassy green glory, there are jalapenos on our pepperoni pizza.

A native New Yorker, I come from a long line of pizza purists. The old Italian guys at home would scoff at this monstrosity. Jalapenos on a pepperoni pie? They would sooner die. I feel a scarlet P burning right through my Dollywood sweatshirt.

A native non-New Yorker, John is undaunted, shoving half a slice down his throat before I can fully absorb this nightmare. I can’t do it. I pluck the first pepper off and hurl it out the window. But when I take the first bite, what remains of its flavor runs like a current through my body. God, that’s good! The jalapenos have softened a bit in the oven, but by no means do they relent. This is flavor that stands up for itself but makes an easy friend, sharing the spotlight at center stage. After three days of gooey chowders and lackluster lobster rolls, perfection has presented itself on a dim, desolate highway and we are giddy with its discovery.

John proclaims this pizza as the best he’s ever had. And O.K., I’ll admit it. I AGREE, and our eyes explode in laughter when I mistake the thud of a passing pickup for Grandpa Nino rolling over in his Brooklyn grave.

Adverbs Must Die

“Unfortunately, my dog died tragically when it was hit by a car. Happily, my cat is still actively alive.”

"He recklessly drove down Market Street at 90 miles per hour.”

“Harry tripped and bashed his shin painfully on a tree stump.”

“Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black.” [Bruce Mau]

“The brilliant comedian Steven Wright once wrote . . .”

“Barry Bonds powerfully hit the baseball out of the stadium and into the bay.”

“Barry Bonds magnificently hit the baseball out of the stadium and into the bay.”

“Mia Hamm skillfully kicked a miraculous goal.”

“‘Go to hell,’ he spat malevolently.”

“My insensitive cousin heartlessly flushed the toilet in which the fish swam.” [Farley Mowatt]

“I waited expectantly for the fish to die.”

“For a time, Max erroneously believed this interest in geology was why he was called ‘Stony,’ but that wasn’t it.” [Robert Earle]

“. . . the explorer Ernest Giles, who spent days wandering waterless and half dead before coming fortuitously on a baby wallaby that had tumbled from its mother’s pouch.”
[Bill Bryson]

“. . . don’t underestimate the broncolike ability of the English language to throw anyone who leaps cocksurely into the saddle.” [E. B. White]

compiled by: Evan Elliot

Assignment: Memoir

What makes a memoir? More often than not, memoir is autobiography, narrowed to present

a particular aspect of a person’s life. Jacques Pepin wrote a memoir of his kitchen apprenticeship, for example. Ruth Reichl wrote about her years as a restaurant reviewer.

For our purposes, a memoir is a memory that prompts reflection or that sparks a story. “The Measure of My Powers” by M. F. K. Fisher is mainly reflective: she begins with a memory and then follows it. “Killing Dinner” by Gabrielle Hamilton is largely narrative: she sets a scene and tells a story.

Now: Please search your food memory for something that stands out. Is it a school lunch? The first meal you cooked to share with someone else? An accident? Why do you think you remember this scene or story? What metaphorical weight might this memory carry? Would you like to reflect on this memory or simply tell it? (You may do both, of course. Look up George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” on Google to see an essay that weaves reflection and narration.) Either way, please write a short chapter for your future book-length memoir.

Pointers? Prompts? Consider these suggestions:

- Explore your subject by listing all the relevant events in sequence. Who was involved?

What happened? When did it happen? Where did it happen? How did it happen? Why did it happen? These standard journalist’s questions will help you examine your subject from all angles, and help you determine which material is most important (everything that you retain should serve the overall impression that you want to make).

- Choose a scene for which you have a strong sense memory. Write this scene as accurately as you can. Tell what people say; show what you see (and smell, and hear, and touch, and taste). Describe how you feel. Then ask yourself: Why do you recall this scene and these details? As you answer this question, you’ll likely see the deeper subject emerge. Then go back and write your memoir afresh, choosing key details so that your reader will discover the deeper subject as he or she reads your piece.

- For a narrative essay, a straight chronological sequence is easiest to manage, but you have options. One is to begin with a final event (such as a discovery or a death) and then describe the events leading up to it—or the aftermath. Another approach is to summarize your story up front, and then examine the important events in detail. You might also try brief flashbacks or flash-forwards that sharpen the significance of the story at hand.

-Evan Elliot